Book Review: Invisible Ellen by Shari Shattuck

Invisible Ellen by Shari Shattuck
Publisher: G.P. Putman’s Sons
Release Date: May 29, 2014
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

For many of us, there comes a moment when we wish we were invisible.

For Ellen Homes, not only does she wish it . . . she actually lives it.

She spends her days quietly observing but unobserved, watching and recording in her notebooks the lives of her neighbors, coworkers, and total strangers. Overweight, socially stunted, and utterly alone, one night Ellen saves a blind young woman from being mugged.

Then everything changes.

Ellen is an overweight woman whose face and psyche are horribly scarred. She spent her childhood either with her abusive mother or in foster care. Ellen says she’s invisible. Basically, that means that either no one notices her because she is shy and withdrawn or they ignore her because her appearance makes them uncomfortable. When she meets Temerity, the blind woman she saves from being mugged, she finds someone who understands her and sometimes feels invisible herself. And ironically, the fact that Temerity can’t see is what makes Ellen visible to her.

I thought the way that way Ellen described her feelings of being invisible was wonderful. And I loved how Justice, Temerity’s anthropologist brother completely gets Ellen. The relationship of all three of them with each other warmed my heart without being trite or cheesy.

Ellen doesn’t know what made her momentarily discard her cloak of invisibility to rescue Temerity, but once she does, she starts to evolve one baby step at a time. I found that fact that it was baby steps instead of a complete overnight transformation authentic. I could easily see the story going the formulaic way and having Temerity bring about a major transformation in Ellen through the power of her friendship. The fact that it doesn’t follow that Lifetime movie format is what makes this book so fabulous.

Ellen is overweight because she is an emotional eater. She eats both for comfort and because she often went hungry as a child. This book has the best descriptions of why an emotional eater eats and how it makes her feel. The author’s insight into the cause and effect of why Ellen eats was brilliant.

I was surprised to learn that Shari Shattuck is an actress and used to star on The Young and Restless among many other acting gigs. She is definitely a multi-talented woman. I highly recommend that you add Invisible Ellen to your summer reading list.

(I received this book courtesy of the publisher.)